Page 63 of A Wedding in a Week

He doesn’t answer, but his hands curling around the steering wheel tell a story that makes me tag on a promise that isn’t mine to make him. “It’s going to be okay.” I mean it though, and at least he must hear that.

He nods although his grip stays tight. He also sighs. “It doesn't help that I’m the last up.”

“That’s because they’ve saved the best for last.”

He smiles then, pink again with sudden pleasure, and that’s better. “Do you ever think that you might be ever so slightly biased?” He draws in a deep breath, easing his foot onto the accelerator, the traffic moving faster. “But I hope you’re right.”

I’m sure that I am, but I also need to say this. “You know it doesn’t matter, don’t you? If it doesn’t go your way today, I mean, because…” I wish I was as whip-crack fast as my brother. He wouldn’t stumble over saying what I feel so deeply it’s turned into my new bedrock.

I take so long to finish that Marc makes guesses. “Because I’ve still got time to accept the London back-up offer?”

“No.”

Christ, no.

That would only take him further away not keep him closer, and that’s what I’d do if he wasn’t driving—I’d pull him close and remind him just how much he’s got this, and me.

That’s what Mum’s waltz around the kitchen yesterday was all about, in hindsight. She was showing me that real partners don’t only share taking the lead. They take turns to lean on each other as well, and now that I think about it, hasn’t this whole last month been that lesson?

I want him to get the same message much faster than me. I want that so much I barely notice that we’ve switched moors and cliffs for hotels and houses, almost at our destination.

Marc pulls up in a quayside car park, finding a spot in the shadow of a tall-masted yacht that I bet he’d rather sail away on than face what’s coming. He even turns off the engine more slowly than usual.

There’s no need for him to hold the steering wheel again, let alone grip it so hard his knuckles whiten—the Land Rover’s engine is off now, the keys in his lap not the ignition, and yet it looks as if he’d also rather drive off the edge of the quay instead of get out.

Don’t I know how it feels to sit in that driver’s seat and hang on like my life depended on it?

Marc really doesn’t have to, so I try not to trip over what feels like our first steps together. Only they can’t be my first steps with Marc, can they? We’ve danced around this since he came home. All I need to do is name it, and it’s strange that I rarely hear Dad. Oh, I see him in my dreams plenty. But hear him? It’s unusual enough that I listen.

We’ll have to keep showing him that he’s wanted until it sinks in.

I try my best to do that. “You having a job in reserve doesn’t matter because I meant what I said last night.”

He blinks, suddenly back to pale, so I try even harder.

“Saying I do means for richer or for poorer, right? That means you paying your way doesn’t matter to me.”

“Stef—”

I guess what’s coming. “I know, I know. You’ve run the numbers. The farm really can’t carry any more people.” I do what Lukas would tut at. Mum on the other hand would clap her hands at me struggling out of my seat belt while wearing a sling. I do it anyway and slide closer to him. “The farm can’t, but I can as soon as Love-Land Weddings is up and running.”

“But Stef, what if—”

Maybe a lifetime around Lukas finally rubs off; I speak over Marc, talking at a mile a minute. “Even if today doesn’t work out for either of us, you really don’t have to go back to London to earn decent money.”

“What if money isn’t the only reas—”

Like Lukas, I keep going, full tilt. “You don’t have to go back because you wouldn’t be without work for long, would you? You’d find a way because nothing stops you, Marc. Nothing. Like nothing stopped you getting that first-class degree or those internships, did it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Because doing it all on your own must have been really fucking difficult. Did your family help you?”

He shakes his head. Of course they didn’t.

“Do they even know you got a job offer from a big firm after interning?”

He shakes his head again. “I don’t see them.” He swallows. “Or Noah. But that’s why—”

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